NASHVILLE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — Conservative news website Daily Wire filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the Biden administration over the COVID shot mandate for businesses.
On the same day, the administration of President Joe Biden had announced its COVID jab mandate for workers, threating fines of up to $136,532 for repeated non-compliance. The shock followed an announcement from Biden in September which declared the government’s intent to require companies with 100 employees or more to coerce workers into receiving an abortion-tainted shot. The deadline facing businesses and employees is January 4, 2022.
Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing outlined on Thursday the reasons behind the suit against the federal government, and the next steps in the process. The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.
Boreing, the co-founder of the Daily Wire, said his company would refuse to comply with Biden’s “tyrannical vaccine mandate.” The Daily Wire lawsuit does not take a stance on whether someone should take the jab or not, but instead focuses on what Boreing called a “grotesque abuse of power” his company “won’t be party to …”
The CEO added that the Daily Wire “will not incur the liability of inserting ourselves into the private health decisions and information of our employees,” explaining that the “company was founded to stand against tyranny, and we will.”
The Daily Wire is being represented by The Dhillon Law Group, Inc., and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Both are non-profit legal groups.
Harmeet Dhillon, a partner at the Dhillon Law Group, said during the press conference that “papers were filed first thing this [Thursday] morning,” and that the firm would be providing a “more voluminous petition with supporting evidence within 24 hours or so.”
In Dhillon’s legal opinion, “the Biden administration lacks the constitutional or the statutory authority delegated by Congress to issue the employer mandate and that the mandate fails to meet the requirements for issuing a rule taking effect immediately without the normal process of considering public comments.”
In addition, Dhillon stated: “… there is no emergency that requires the Biden administration to skip over the normal rulemaking process to implement this radical takeover of the American workplace that is not authorized by Congress or by the Constitution.”
Ryan Banger, ADF Senior Counsel, added that the lawsuit is “not about whether the COVID vaccine is a good thing … The question is whether the federal government has the authority to strip Americans of that freedom to decide by conscripting private employers like The Daily Wire to become the government’s COVID vaccine commissars.”
Of particular concern to Boreing and the Daily Wire is the fact that American citizens face the prospect of losing their jobs if they do not comply with the mandate. He expressed his dismay over hearing stories of “individuals trying to make a stand” against vaccine mandates who “lost their jobs.” The Daily Wire CEO believes that individual citizens are often at a disadvantage, therefore he said, “corporations and states have certain responsibilities because we have the means to engage in this battle.”
Along with what Boreing views as an “unconstitutional” move from the Biden regime, he believes that it is important for companies to consider practical matters of liability. “We should be clear about what the government is asking us to do: discriminate against our own employees on the basis of their private health care decisions,” Boreing said. He added, “I don’t see how the government can rightly put those liabilities on us into the future.”
An article at the Daily Wire summarized the concerns of the CEO: “… the costs incurred by businesses forced to regulate employees who do not take the vaccine create a jumble of potential legal problems should an unvaccinated employee need to be let go.”
During the press conference, Boreing slammed the national response to the declared pandemic, saying, “President Biden, the federal government, social media, and the establishment media have conspired to rob Americans of their freedoms in the name of public health.” He also expressed his sentiment that the response has led to a “broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree.”
The Daily Wire is not the only conservative voice to announce a challenge to Biden’s abortion-tainted vaccine mandate. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) announced last week that he would be filing a lawsuit. The Georgia governor was joined by leaders from Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.
If the vaccine mandate takes effect, it is expected to affect about 84 million people.